Mank Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs

4. The Deliciously Witty Script

Mank's screenplay was written by David Fincher's late father Jack back in the 1990s, and the filmmaker originally intended to make the movie after completing The Game in 1997, yet his insistence that the film be shot in black-and-white prevented it from ever going before cameras.

Almost 25 years later, Mank is finally hitting screens, and it has to be said that Fincher's devilishly witty screenplay is one of the easy highlights.

As frantically as it sometimes whips between time periods and characters, this is a wonderfully literate script packed with both smart nods to Hollywood history and heaps of pithy one-liners.

There's a rat-a-tat quality to the back-and-forth dialogues in its best moments, where much like The Social Network, talking between fired-up parties becomes a frantic tennis match of put-downs.

And while the end result is certainly more measured than in Fincher's Facebook drama, the script still provides a sturdy platform for Oldman and co. to stage a rich and absorbing depiction of a man swept up in the Hollywood maelstrom.